


7th Scent:  Hall Closet

by Windryder1



Series: How to Train Your Animal Demon [7]
Category: Persona 4
Genre: Danger, Friendship, Other, Profound Bond, Samurai, persona 4 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 20:26:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3823744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windryder1/pseuds/Windryder1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While at a study group at the Hanamura's two days after "Gone Forever," the fox demon gets bored of watching his three friends --Yukiko, Chie, and Yu--study, so he explores his future home.  He finds the Hanamura's hall closet door jimmied open and can't resist checking it out.<br/>This is the first time the fox demon is afraid of Yu Narukami.<br/>Yu realizes that although the fox is a creature of myth, he's still flesh and blood and just as fragile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	7th Scent:  Hall Closet

7th SCENT: HALL CLOSET

\----Two days after “Gone Forever” at the Hanamura Residence...----

The next two days of school passed by with boring regularity. Mr. Morooka crushed their weekend hopes with a new homework assignment in the form of a one page report about the differences between the two main political regimes at the start of the Meiji Restoration. How boring and useless could any paper possibly be? This was a grade school topic, and yet the whole class was forced to suffer through remedial work. The reason? Kou Ichijo got caught trying to quietly recruit the guy next to him into the basketball team. After getting his ass handed to him by King Moron's legendary verbal evisceration, everyone in class 2-2 hated him. The social shunning would only last the weekend. After all, they'd been given worse over less. 

Either way, Yu had to man up and write it. Scratching down a page of notes taken from *Lookit articles, and his previous knowledge of having written a similar paper a year ago at his other school made this easy, but still as entertaining as watching nails dissolve in a can of Cielo Mist.

He, Yukiko, and Chie sat on the living room floor of the Hanamura residence surrounded by school books, their bags, and notebooks. 

"I don't get this at all," Chie's head thunked heavily against her open book. "Who cares what they did back then? It's not like it's being done now." The sound of crunching drew her gaze over to the tiny fox demon munching on a cracker in the midst of their study circle. She envied his life. "I don't suppose you know anything about the politics of a bygone era."

Yosuke stared blankly at her over the treat, his eyes flicking from the book to her defeated expression and back. A what? How should he know? He didn't even know what politics were, or what a 'bygone' was, and tried to tell her he was learning about all this at the same time. 

She sighed in response to his incomprehensible sounds, yips, and barks. If he was trying to explain, she wouldn't understand anyway. "Right. Why did I even ask."

He dropped another cracker on her book, scattering crumbs into the binding crease. It wasn't steak, but it might help her think. Food usually worked to get him going. 

She picked it up and ate it. 

Satisfied he'd helped, he continued nibbling on his own snack. He had better things to do anyway than stare at a book: like play, learn to speak, watch t.v, eat, and play games. Occasionally, he'd try to help with homework if he could, though he was only ever asked to watch, find things or sharpen pencils. Enough of his daily time included studying with his Human anyway, thus he'd started to develop an annoyance at the sound of the word. 

The Hanamura residence was incredibly huge, and he still needed to explore every room, hole, and crevice he could get into. If he was going to live here, he wanted to know every inch of it. He finished off his own cracker and dashed away from the living room. Let them study. He had secrets to uncover. 

"Try starting at 1868," Yukiko offered. 

"Why such a specific date?" Chie sipped from the can of soda next to her. 

“That marked the end of the Tokugawa shogunate.” 

"Oh," Chie glanced to Yu, who'd been writing without saying more than two words this whole time. "Can I look at your paper when you're done?"  
"You can look at my notes," he slid the notepad over, then went back to writing. 

"Whoa!" Chie's jaw slacked at the page blackened with writing. "This is like a book on its own! I gotta borrow your notes more often." She tipped the spiral notebook so her friend could see.

"I'm impressed at the details." Yukiko's eyebrows raised curiously at the date noted at the top. "Hey, this is from a year ago. Your old school?"

His eyes never left the page. "Yeah. This is technically the same assignment. The old notes are still valid to a degree."

Chie slid him a nonplussed gaze. "Why didn't you just turn in your old paper?"

His pencil paused halfway through a word. "Because I wasn't happy with the grade I got on that paper."

"So you're doing the work all over again?" She couldn't see why he wouldn't simply alter the original. "Are you feeling ok?"

"I'm looking at this like a second draft. If I think of it as anything more, my brain will freeze up from complete boredom." He went back to writing. "Besides, Mrs. Hanamura left cupcakes warming in the oven. She told me once we were finished, we could have one." 

"Cupcakes? All right!" Chie set about studying the notes. She wished she'd paid attention when the lady of the house spoke to Yu before she left to run some erands. "I didn't know you were so easily bought off, Yu," she snickered.

He let a small smirk crease his lips as he looked up at them from his work. "Sugar can be a powerful persuader." The frantic scratching of a pencil drew his attention to the third member of their study group. "Yukiko?"

"I love cupcakes," her voice held a timber of someone in a trance. Her hand flew across the paper. "Especially ones with creamy frosting. I'm going to finish this paper in record time." Though her voice was light and calm, it held an air of fierce competitive determination. 

So, she liked cupcakes. He'd have to remember that.

The three wrote in silence for a few moments, filling the air with the sounds of pencils, eraser rubbing, and page turning. 

Chie loved working in this environment. She had her best friend, her new friend—whom she had to admit was a little on the cute side—and the promise of positive reinforcement once this torture was over. At least they could study in peace. It was quiet. Come to think of it, it was a little ...too...quiet. She glanced around and stretched her arms over her head. "Hey, where's Yosuke?"

Yu leaned up to take in the empty room. That was a very good question. He listened for a moment, hearing nothing, but that distraction of focus made him realize his heart rate had increased like he'd consumed too much coffee. It felt similar—yet highly watered down—to the 'danger' sense that had kept him from sleeping the night he was called over at 1am to calm down the fox. Both the stillness and his quickened pulse concerned him a little. "I'll go find him." He stretched, and left the the two to their papers. 

\----  
Someone had left the hall closet door cracked. It was partially off its track, so the one who'd opened it probably abandoned the fight to close it all the way in order to hurry off to their next chore. This left a golden exploration opportunity open to a very curious little fox-boy.  
Yosuke peeked his head through to see into the darkness, blinked to let his eyes adjust, and slipped easily inside. His mouth gaped open as he stared up at tightly packed towers of boxes both open and taped closed. This room was creepy, like a whole other world. He moved forward, turning to walk backwards to stare up at a naked light bulb dangling high above from the ceiling, and bumped into a box. A kabuki mask clattered to the floor. 

“Ah!” He leaped back, ears flat, tail bushed out, and growled at it. It stared back with empty eyes. Cautiously, he sniffed the air and stepped forward to flick his fingers against the mask's surface. It wobbled. He picked it up, looked behind it at the leather ties hanging limply from the inside, and stuck his arms through the eye holes. It looked like the mask from that monster in his nightmare, but this one didn't frighten him. He laughed. Yu would love this. What else were the Hanamuras hiding in the hall closet?

He let it fall face up and jumped onto a box that said 'Collection box 1 of 6.' He climbed over boxes 2 through 6, and leaped up to catch a shelf. Yosuke pulled himself up next to an open box of Christmas ornaments and crouched down. The mask stared up at him from a far distance. He was pretty high up—he'd have to guess he was at Human head height. So this was what the world looked like to them. Everything below him seemed so small. 

He inched between another box and a lamp, and stopped at the edge of the next shelf up. Something slim, shiny, and black glinted directly across the room in the skinny shaft of light slicing in from the hallway. This thing was so important, it owned a whole section of shelf for its own. An open box of clothes sat below it. Curious, the little fox gauged the distance, climbed up one more box, and jumped to grab the pull string dangling from the light. It clicked the light on as he swung across on the make-shift vine. Yosuke let go at the last second, and reached greedily for the shelf.

He caught a small shoebox, pulling it down, but managed not to go with it. A pair of old fashioned wooden shoes clattered out of it near the mask. He breathed a sigh of relief. That was a close call. 

The sudden ruckus caught Yu's attention at the base of the stairs. That could only be the fox-boy getting into trouble. He shifted his direction to the upstairs hall.

Yosuke faced the thing that had caught his eye. The dark cherry-wood stand it was perched on set back near the wall, which gave him plenty of space to move. Whatever this was had a beautiful black-wrapped long hilt, a silver ring, and housed a long, curved, beetle-black case. He pulled at the case until he heard a satisfying 'click.' The clean, polished steel of the blade stood out in stark contrast to the rest of the midnight color. He smiled at his reflection in the polished surface and made silly faces back at himself. He stuck out his tongue, pulled down his ears, shook them out, drew both ends of his mouth out with his fingers, grinned so his incisors showed, then gave his best stoic expression as close to Yu's as he could get. This was amazing! He had to see more. 

Curiosity overcame any sense of danger as he pulled the sheath free. The other end dropped to the shelf in a heavy 'thud.' He lifted it, looked it over, and set it down. What really drew his attention was the blade. It shone like sunlight through running water, and it was sharp. He pressed his palm against the downward facing cutting edge, and yelped when it drew blood. A few drops dripped near his feet. Stunned, Yosuke stared at his hand. He'd never seen his own blood before—that he could remember. 

Now he knew what this was! The samurai in old movies used these all the time. This was a katana—the weapon of a kick-ass sword master. How cool would it be to wield one of these? 

Curious, and wanting to know what it feels like to be one of those awesome samurai warriors, he wrapped both hands around the hilt and hefted it from the stand. It was far heavier than it looked. He staggered back from the weight, tried to balance with his tail, stumbled forward, and finally gave up to roughly drop the thing back. Pain from his hand speared up his arm and he yelped. The stand wobbled. He'd used all of his strength just to lift the massive weapon. 

“Yosuke?”

The little fox jolted at the sound of his name. His foot bumped against the sheath, sending it off balance and tumbling to the floor. It hit the box of clothes on the way down, sending shirts billowing with the wooden shoes and mask. 

The ill-set sword slipped from its place, forcing the already unstable stand past its limits. 

Yosuke yipped in fear, scrambled to his feet, and jumped as the stand tipped over. The sword knocked free and rolled lazily to teeter at the lip of the wooden shelf. 

Yu had heard the box hit the floor, and noticed a light that shouldn't be on coming from the hall closet. There hadn't been a need to worry... until he heard the sheath hit the floor. It was a sound he'd become very familiar with over his life. Adrenaline spiked through his blood. He pulled hard against the door jammed in its track, pushed with his back, and used his foot against the frame as leverage until the door gave way with a loud 'snap'. It slammed against the opposite side.

The little fox hit the pile of clothes on the floor. He stared up with wide brown eyes as the sword's weight lost the fight against gravity and dropped right for the tiny animal demon. 

Yu saw the light glint from the blade as it slipped free. “Yosuke!” He dove into the room, twisted his body so he was on one knee over the fox-boy as a shield, and snapped his right wrist over his head. 

He caught the sword by the hilt, with his other hand planted against the floor for balance. 

Stunned, the fox-boy swallowed against his racing heart and tilted his head back to look straight up at the Human curled over him. He could hear Yu's quick breathing—a reaction to narrowly making a near impossible catch—and was about to tell him how amazing that was, when the other's breath suddenly evened out. His whole aura shifted. 

Yu picked up the sheath, stood, and expertly returned the blade to its place. 

The hiss of metal against metal and the loud click of the catch filled the room. 

“Yu—” Yosuke tried. 

Yu snapped his steely, silver-eyed stare down at him. 

Yosuke's ears flattened. All words in the Human's language vanished from his mind. The intimidating energy exuding from the giant washed over him and pierced through his core. Right now, he could believe that the other knew how to use that weapon, and wouldn't bat an eyelash at cutting through anyone who angered him. The intensity of it forced him to shrink back as his eyes widened and he trembled. His tail slowly fluffed out. 

For the first time, he feared Yu Narukami. 

Yu replaced the stand and set the katana back where it belonged. Once the sword was safely secured, he exhaled. “Are you ok?” He glanced down to the fox-boy, who backed up two steps, and suddenly bolted from the closet. He found the little guy hiding underneath a table at the end of the hall. He knelt down to look under it. 

Yosuke stared back from the shadowed space in full defense mode. That was a different person in that room just now. It was not the person who'd saved him at the shrine. 

“You gonna come out?” Yu reached under the table, but the fox-boy scooted away and crossed his arms in a manner he recognized as protection. “What's wrong?”

“Scarey,” Yosuke managed.

“The katana?” 

Yosuke shook his head from side to side, his ears still flat in indication that he felt threatened. 

Yu paused, taking note of his posture, and took a chance by reaching out again. The fox bumped up against the wall and let out a quick, 'stay back,' trill-bark he'd never heard before. It was one he never wanted to hear again. His voice softened. “You're afraid of me?”

The fox nodded. 

He sighed, realizing he'd 'turned on' his warrior spirit in order to move fast enough to catch the blade in mid fall. Had he not, the fox demon wouldn't be standing here, and he would have taken a serious injury as a shield. “I see,” he tried. He didn't ever want the fox-demon to be afraid of him. “It's ok. Come on out.”

Yosuke shuffled out from under the table, but kept his eyes on Yu's face. He sniffled. “Play...shiny...Yu...bad... SORRY!” He sobbed. He knew he screwed up with trying to pick up the weapon, but he was mostly responding instinctively to a situation where the one he trusted most became the one he feared the most. The sense from Yu's energy was frightening, though he only knew how to convey that in his own language. He gave up trying to speak Japanese, and launched into how he wanted to be like those samurai and ninjas on t.v, and he thought he would look amazing if he had a sword like that. He flinched when Yu scratched his ears. 

“Calm down. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.” 

The fox-boy rested his hand on the other's forearm and sniffed the air. He had to make sure the severe energy had gone back to the calm he'd become accustomed to. The ear scratching let him feel more at ease at least, and the sense from his Human returned to normal. He let his tail smooth, and hugged him. Whatever had replaced Yu's energy was gone, and he hoped it wouldn't come back. If it did, he had to remind himself it was still the same person—just another side he hadn't known about until now. When he relaxed, the pain from the cut throbbed through his arm. It pushed forward to claim his full focus now that the excitement had ended. 

Yu raised an eyebrow as the fox clutched his right hand close to his chest. He carefully pulled the little guy's tiny hand away and pried it open with two fingers. Red blood smeared all over his palm. “You cut yourself on the blade?”

Yosuke tried to tell him that picking up the sword by the blade wasn't a good idea. It was his first time seeing one in real life.  
“I wish I could understand you.” Yu picked him up and took him downstairs to the bathroom where he cleaned the wound with a cotton ball and wrapped a band-aid up the little fox's arm with the medicated pad over his palm. He watched him look it over and poke at the bandage with his ears forward in curiosity as to what it was. “You'll be fine. Just stay out of the hall closet.”

Yosuke nodded. “Ok.”

Yu glanced to his forearm where the animal demon's hand had gripped. A small blood streak marred his skin. An equally little hand print stained the side of his white shirt, too. This wasn't an ethereal being of myth—this was a flesh and blood creature that he had to take care of. The fox demon may be a yokai, but he was just as fragile as himself or any other person. “If you ever learn to look like a Human, keep the katana here. I don't want to get arrested.” He set the fox on the floor. 

Yosuke made a 'blech' face. Become Human? Hah! Like that would ever happen. “Ninja!” He jumped up, spun, and landed in a crouch with his tail sticking straight out. 

“You'd make a cool ninja. We just have to find something your own size; Like a letter opener, or carpet tacks.”

Yosuke ran back into the living room to annoy the girls. 

“There you guys are,” Chie sat up when the fox plopped to the floor to roll around in the center of the study group. “Where was he?” 

“Hall closet.” Yu sat back down and picked up his notebook. His paper was nearly finished. 

Yukiko frowned at the first aid treatment wrapped around the fox demon's hand and arm. “Is he ok?”

“He's fine. It's just a scratch.” Yu assured her. However, he could foresee a future lesson with the fox on how to properly treat a katana. 

There were two ways this could go: 

1\. The fox would fear weapons

2\. He'd face them, and learn to use one. 

The second option was the winner. He needed to address this now before any fear could fully form. Said lesson would commence after the girls left...and after cupcakes.

The three watched Yosuke reenact the whole adventure animatedly with kicks, punches, and jumps, though not a single person could understand a word he said. The pantomimed show gave them a distraction outlet from their boring homework assignment, though. 

Yosuke didn't care. He finally got to reveal the secrets of the hall closet, though he wouldn't ever forget what it taught him. 

However, two shorter blades like knives or kunai might be more his style. Maybe the Hanamuras had a pair of those...

 

(*Lookit –a fake wikipedia style site I made up.)


End file.
